The Australian market is tipped to open higher this morning, with futures up 52.3 points at 8:49 AEST, mainly riding on a rally in the United States which saw the S&P 500 and Nasdaq bourses close at record highs.
On Wednesday in the US, Wall Street ended the day strongly higher chasing a rally in tech stocks led in particular by Nvidia, and also boosted by optimism of a rate cut from the Federal Reserve later in the year, following the release of weak labour market figures.
The Bank of Canada cut interest rates to 4.75 percent on Wednesday, being the first G7 nation to do so.
The S&P 500 rose 1.2 percent, while the Nasdaq 100 lifted 2 percent, and the Dow rose by 96 points. In terms of the tech rally, Nvidia moved up 5 percent by the close of trading – a new record, reaching a market value of $3 trillion, and this was backgrounded by the stock’s 140 percent rise this year overall.
Other tech companies were also higher, including TSMC (up 6.8 percent), Broadcom (6.2 percent), AMD (3.8 percent) and Micron Tech (5.6 percent)
On the Australian bourse, Voltaic Resources Ltd (ASX:VSR) confirmed copper-gold mineralisation at its project in Meekatharra, engineering firm SRG Global Ltd (ASX:SRG) confirmed the securing of $125 million worth of contracts across Australia, and TELIX Pharmaceuticals Ltd (ASX:TLX) announced that it had launched a proposed IPO on the US market.
In other mining news, Aguia Resources Ltd (ASX:AGR) has announced it has closed a takeover of Andean Mining Ltd, and BMW has committed to European Lithium Ltd (ASX:EUR)’s Wolfsberg Lithium Project.
In commodities, brent crude is up 1.48% to US$78.67/bbl, uranium is down -0.22% to US$89.65/lb – close to its one-month low of $89/bl – on news that President Biden has banned the import of enriched uranium from Russia. Meanwhile, gold has risen 1.15% to US$2,356/oz and copper is up 1.82% to US$4.62/lb.
One Australian dollar is trading at 67 US cents.
That’s market open, we’ll be with you later in the trading day.